What is phytotechnology? What the use of it? Is it only for remediation? Here are some explanations that I got in one of my class.

Phytotechnology is a technology using plant to process and treat the environment. The plant we use better not for corps, especially if we use it for remediation. Better if we choose plants with rapid growth. There are many use of phytotechnology. In this article, I want to explain about it use for checking on environment quality.

Common parameter to check environment quality is BOD or COD. But even BOD is taking about 5 days to measure and it's not fast enough if we want to know if there are some pollution. Another weakness is BOD or COD only give data for water quality. How if we want to know soil or air or even all three components' quality? Phytotechnology is the answer. The plant can be an indicator of water, soil, and air quality. But do make sure the plants are alive!

Here some example of its use. The first one is tobacco leaf for indicator of ozone. If the ozone is exceeding, in the leaf there will be yellow or brown spots. The other example is Eichhornia crassipes which can be water quality indicator. If in the water there is too much organic compound, the leaf will smaller than normal. Otherwise, if the leaf was more big than normal it means there is too much inorganic compound in the water.

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